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An online journal about visual art, the urban landscape and design. Mary Louise Schumacher, the Journal Sentinel's art and architecture critic, leads the discussion and a community of writers contribute to the dialogue.

The Guardian calls out the Milwaukee Art Museum

The Guardian has taken a strong leadership role in covering the detention of China's most famous living artist, Ai Weiwei. In one of the best and most thorough articles yet, published this morning, the Guardian calls this "a watershed moment for the international art world, the equivalent of the moral tests so badly flunked by technology companies like Cisco and Yahoo." »Read Full Blog Post

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Given the museum's role as a catalog of history, the issue becomes complicated by the fact that there's an entirely different set of ethical principles at work here. Should the historian care so much about modern politics that he risks his historical objectivity and uses an artifact irrelevant to modern political discourse as a tool in it?

I'm not so sure it's the museum's responsibility to facilitate the discourse around what it contains anyway. If enough people are vocal enough about the issue, then the museum can still display some beautiful, immeasurably rare artifacts while the general public can remain educated about modern China and Ai's predicament.

The Guardian has no right to disrespect Milwaukee like that. China is a great trading partner with America and these pretentious organizations have to slam everything that does not benefit them. The guardian is out of touch and if these artists violate chinease laws they should not be protected.

Milwaukee, the heart of the rust belt, (what used to be the "tool shop to the world,") is being used for a P.R. stunt to hide the brutal economic realities.

Among other things, you should read our Bill of Rights. In addition to routinely depriving the workers in the People's Republic of China of their rights, this communist country engages in child-labor. http://mobile.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4213325/Apple-reveals-Chinese-child-labor-at-suppliers

The url above is from Electrical Engineering Times in February.

The cold hard economic reality is that we have outsourced much of our manufacturing base to a Communist country. The reason capitalism works is because of "free" markets. If "labor" isn't "free" to organize, all the wealth flows north to a very small group of very wealthy people. Then, demand evaporates. That crushes the need for "supply."

As I'm sure you're well aware, Joseph Stiglitz, Ph.D. won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001. He explained the process well in this May piece for Vanity Fairhttp://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105

"Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%""Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret."....

Hello Super King, et al, the role of a museum is, as you point out, a complex matter. It might be useful to read my original column on the subject which has been called "scrupulously fair" and thorough. http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/entertainment/122202159.html. I hope you find it useful.

It's neither the job nor duty of the Milwaukee Art Museum to engage in political protests. What is the point? The views of the MAM will not affect the regime in China. Plenty of other people are protesting about this. I think the MAM should do the show and stay out of politics. If not, then all art they show must undergo the rigorous tests of political correctness that shift like the sands.

Many American museums are highly ethically compromised. Their boards, now generally composed of the wealthy and politically conservative elites; often steer their institutions in a money-based, conservative direction with no vision of morality except where it might hurt their pocketbooks. There is no such thing as a politically neutral collaboration with the People's Republic of China. EVERYTHING their government does has a political agenda to promote the status quo and silence Chinese dissenters. There are lots of moral gymnastics that Americans engage in to justify ignoring the ethics of current events, such as the persecution of Ai Wei Wei; but they all ring hollow. The hard truth is, the individual person has historically and through the present, NO value in the eyes of the Chinese governmental establishment. Someone connected to the MAM in the previous JS discussion mentioned the fact of China's 5,000 year history as a reason for the upstart US not to lecture it. Well, throughout this 5,000 year history, the individual has suffered in ways that are hard for Americans to imagine. One big fat example are the hundreds of thousands of people who died building the Great Wall...and who were immured within the wall to add to its fill. Yes, the MAM should cancel the exhibition as it will be used by the Chinese government to promote how wonderful it is. This is an opportunity for an American institution to stand up for a very brave artist: Ai Wei Wei. The Guardian has written a lot over the last few years re Ai Wei Wei and he has had several very fine exhibitions in UK.

Just who is The Guardian? The JS should have told us who they are.The Chinese artist has been imprisoned for merely disagreeing with the Chinese Communist government. This is wrong. There should be no ethical or even economic "complexity" here. Don't get stuck in paralysis through too much analysis. True lovers of liberty, which includes freedom of expression through art, would speak out against any oppression of art, while they still can.

Museums and other cultural entities have an obligation to provide context for their exhibits: beyond that they have a moral obligation to speak and/or act in defense of free artistic expression when that is under assault. To do less is to shirk their responsibility.

The act of appeasement, whether for so-called practical reasons, or just because an unfettered admiration for our brand of capitalism leads seamlessly into support for an oppressive communist regime, reinforces this tendency to shirk. It is time for Milwaukee's cultural leadership to grow a moral backbone.

Whether this takes the form of ditching the new exhibit, or simply being steadfast in using the exhibit as the context for hard-hitting public discussions of artistic freedom and brutal oppression, the museum needs to take a stand. Standing on the sidelines in this situation is not enough.

Braind: you're not much of a "brain" if you don't know what The Guardian is. Seriously... get out of your shell and leave Wisconsin once in a while. Don't tell me you get ALL your news from the JS and the local TV hacks?

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